every day we walk our hood-harbor loop – whether we extend it beyond 3.5 miles or not – we pass this tree. on this particular day – with this particular sunset and this particular western sky – it was particularly striking. it stopped me a couple steps beyond it – whispering to me not to miss it – and i went back to photograph it.

wow.

the silhouette.

i remember a very specific photograph taken of me when i was (very) pregnant with my girl. i was sitting and teaching a piano lesson and, for some reason, there is a photo of this. looking at that picture after it was developed (as in film-developing) was eye-opening. i couldn’t believe my profile. it didn’t have the inherent softness of a silhouette, flaws blending into dark and inky . it was just – well – a straight up picture – no softness, no blending, no depth of field out-of-focus. good grief…i was gigantic. all, of course, worth it in the end. it makes me laugh now, but the day i saw the photograph – in one of those envelopes of prints/negatives you’d get back from the photography store or walgreens or wherever you might mail them away to – that day i shed a few tears. i was just shocked. one rarely sees oneself from the side. and, like, wow.

this morning – a few days before this is publishing – we watched a video of buddhist quiet wisdom. it was about aging – which is yet another time of life that our photographs look less and less like we think they should look.

i think the main takeaway for me from that video is the very simple message: you already have enough.

what we bring to this moment – letting go of all the other moments – is enough. the ultimate in presence. a profile of peace and acceptance and utter appreciation.

last week there were a few days when the combo platter of actual temperature and humidity yielded ridiculously high feels-likes outside. we decided to stay in.

and somehow, in our staying-in, we decided to clean the kitchen cabinets…you know, the ones with plates and bowls and cookware and platters and plastic storage with too many lids and not enough containers and dipping bowls and servingware and cutting boards and tupperware and handed-down mid-century glasses and corningware and pyrex mixing bowls and platters and trivets and jam jars that are now everyday glasses and those multi-colored plastic sippy-cups (with lids) and tervis tumblers and (have i lost you yet?) voila! two gravy boats and the plastic shaker thing in which you mix the flour and water.

so.

it was a ginormous task.

i said to him: i don’t want this to turn into a big-deal-like-all-day-thing.

ha.

it turned into three-big-deal-all-day-things.

but, in the middle of extracting everything from the cabinets and laying it on counters and then washing it all and d washing out every single old cabinet and shoring things up a bit and taking stock and thinking through what should stay and what should go and how it should all be stored – what makes sense for day-to-day life – we found ourselves inside very present days.

the silhouette of our days profiled narrative of the last forty to fifty years – old things, new things, things we purchased together, things i had from my previous life, things that had been handed-down.

it was a gorgeous sunset in our kitchen each day we worked on this project – lighting up stories from long ago to now, laughter and joy.

we worked both quietly and raucously. and, at the end of each day, we each had some pretty achy muscles from the up and down on chairs to reach cabinet shelves, the constant on-our-feet washing, washing, the belly laughs about curly straws and sippy cups and a yellow ceramic platter – to which i am still dedicated though i haven’t touched it in at least a decade. we were horrified at the dust and the far reaches of old contact paper and the sheer volume of stuff that had fit into cabinets that looked like it would never pack in there again.

in the middle of our giant-but-not-supposed-to-be-giant-which-yes-caused-a-ruckus-or-two task, we never once gave specific thought to how our aging bodies looked. we never once questioned where we are in life or where we think we should have been. we were just where we were. and it was most definitely gratifying.

it was enough.

and it was backlit by the sun, setting on each of our days, the north sky out the big picture window over the sink illuminating a hot day ending.

the silhouette of happy.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

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